Crime & Law
Cook County State’s Attorney Pushes Back on Calls for Special Prosecutor to Investigate ICE
A Border Patrol agent’s badge is seen near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Ill., Oct. 3, 2025. (AP Photo / Erin Hooley, File)
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke says her office doesn’t have the legal authority to initiate criminal investigations into alleged misconduct by federal immigration agents, claiming that by doing so she would be “willfully violat(ing) the law.”
That comes in response to a petition filed by a local coalition of elected officials, community organizations and attorneys who are calling for a special prosecutor to investigate misconduct allegations levied against Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during the Trump administration’s expanded immigration enforcement in Illinois last fall.
They claim that despite “overwhelming evidence” of criminal misconduct carried out by federal agents during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts known as “Operation Midway Blitz,” O’Neill Burke’s office has taken no action to investigate or prosecute those alleged crimes.
Attorneys with the law firm of Loevy and Loevy, which filed the petition, argued this represents a conflict of interest and an “abandonment” by the state’s attorney’s office of its duties.
In her reply, filed Tuesday, O’Neill Burke denied any such conflict exists and claimed her office can only launch investigations when a law enforcement agency’s own investigation is inadequate or if such an agency asks for assistance in its own investigation. She said neither such case apply here.
Instead, O’Neill Burke argued, the coalition has asked the court to “ignore the law” and appoint a special prosecutor based solely on “public outrage and the will of multiple political figures as support for their position.”
“They want federal immigration officers prosecuted based on information gleaned from newspaper accounts rather than properly collected and analyzed evidence … And they are willing to present baseless allegations and gross misrepresentations of law to this Court to advance their agenda,” the state’s attorney’s response states.
Judge Erica Reddick, presiding judge of the Cook County Circuit Court’s criminal division, oversaw a brief hearing on the petition Tuesday, but no rulings were made. The parties will return to court early next month.
O’Neill Burke has repeatedly rejected calls for a special prosecutor, saying the coalition’s plan is “frivolous, contrary to centuries of legal precedent and court rulings, (and) riddled with factual errors.” In a statement earlier this month, she said the petition would only make it “more difficult” for her office to prosecute ICE agents who break the law.
Numerous calls for criminal charges have been made after federal agents killed Silverio Villegas González during a traffic stop in suburban Franklin Park and critically wounded Marimar Martinez in Brighton Park in separate incidents during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge last fall.
No agents have yet been charged with a crime in either case.
Federal agents deployed in and around Chicago during Midway Blitz have also been accused of assault and battery against peaceful civilians, conducting illegal detentions and tear-gassing men, women and children alike without provocation.
The coalition has said many of those alleged crimes were recorded on camera, while dozens of sworn declarations and hundreds of hours of video evidence have already been submitted in federal lawsuits detailing the broad allegations.
Steve Art, an attorney for the coalition, said O’Neill Burke’s argument that she is being asked to violate the law by opening these investigations is “astounding.”
“All of these petitioners have been asking for justice for months at this point,” Art said following Tuesday’s hearing. “And instead of getting any commitment to … investigate, to prosecute, all we get from the state’s attorney is legal obstacles.”
He said that among all areas across the country where ICE and Border Patrol have been accused of crimes, it is only Cook County where the local prosecutor is saying “there is nothing legally that I can do.”
Earlier this month, local prosecutors in Hennepin County Minnesota — which includes Minneapolis, which like Chicago saw a surge in ICE enforcement last year — announced they are investigating 17 potential criminal incidents involving federal agents.
“It is beyond belief,” Art said, “that the Cook County state’s attorney is taking the position that it is illegal for her to do so.”
Note: Loevy and Loevy has done legal work for WTTW News.
